


The Woods

by Pouxin



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-23
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pouxin/pseuds/Pouxin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cottia, Esca and Marcus experience some local flora</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Woods

**Pairing** : Esca/Marcus; implied Cottia/Marcus  
 **Rating** : PG-13 for sexuality  
 **Notes** : Book/movie verse mash-up. Inspired by the picture of the red berries for the [fanmedia challenge](http://ninth-eagle.livejournal.com/230431.html). Apologies for any incorrect knowledge of the flora and fauna of Roman Britain, I grew up in deep country but my knowledge of what is truly indigenous is a little patchy!

**The Woods**

 

 _The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way_  
\- Frank Crane, 1919

 

 

Now it is Spring and the weather is turning, Cottia sometimes comes with them. She tucks her skirts between her legs and rides astride, like they do. Marcus laughs at her.

"You look like Epona," he says, and the three of them smile, happy for this piece of shared knowing.

 

"You won't be able to do this once we are married," he adds; and this time when she smiles there is a bite to it.

"Why, will you forbid me?"

Marcus feels the strange thrill in him then, the one normally only Esca can give him, but he smiles good naturedly. "No, I won't _forbid_ you. I just meant you will be too busy, on the farm, for our little jaunts."

Cottia tosses her hair, dark flames and spices. "Maybe I will leave you and Esca to make the bread and I will go hunting," she says archly.

But they do not hunt, not with Cottia. Instead it is more like foraging; depending on the season they return with armfuls of mushrooms, pale like secrets; or a saddle pouch filled with sweet, damp nuts; or baskets of berries, lush and red like cherries, or the sour purple growl of the fruits that grow in the bramble bushes, the ones that stain their mouths the colour of warrior's skin.

She and Esca swap knowledge of the local fauna, heads bent together over some new find, her ginger and cinnamon, his the colour of a field mouse in summer grass. They use strange lilting words he doesn't recognise, which they seem to both understand even though he knows they don't speak the same language. Native words for the native fruits. Sometimes they argue. Esca knows more than Cottia, has spent more time in the woods; but his woods are different, darker and denser, further north of here.

They have ridden west, further than usual. Marcus keeps one wary eye on the path of the sun above their heads, always unsure when they are in new territory. He does not want to be outside Calleva when dusk arrives with her purple legions, sweeping over the terrain and rendering him little better than a blind man, here where he does not know the way of the hills. Or the people. Esca and Cottia and Cub prance ahead, relaxed, at home.

Suddenly Cottia gives a little gasp, "Look!" Marcus follows the point of her finger, sees a clump of small dirty purple flowers growing close in to the trunk of a tree, dappled by shade, bowing their heads gently towards a nearby brook.

"Ragged robins?" Esca asks, and then half turns to Marcus and says, " _Lychnis flos-cuculi_ ," as if Marcus had any idea what those were anyway, as if a soldier who grew up in the dust and bustle of Rome knows anything about flowers.

"No, no," Cottia says impatiently, already swinging down from her little grey mare.

Esca tries again, in that strange liquid harshness of his own tongue, saying something that, as far as Marcus can tell, approximately translates as _ladies hair_.

"No!" Cottia has reached the flowers now, which look timid and inconsequential to Marcus, certainly not worthy of all this fuss; not like when they find blackberries or hazelnuts, something that will earn them a floury smile from Sassticca upon their return. She squats down on her haunches, flicking her spice coloured hair over one shoulder, and gently picks one quivering stem.

"They're orchids, look." She turns, smiling. Her voice is huskier than usual. "They're beautiful."

She proffers the one she has picked up to Esca, still mounted on his horse. He smiles.

"Ah, yes. We don't get them like this in the North. They're smaller, paler. And only on the heath, or the dunes, by the sea."

Up closer, Marcus can see the flower is unusual, a soft lilac frill revealing a paler, half-hidden centre, spotted with little licks of the darker colour, then paler still into the centre, paler but shadowed, the flower opening her throat.

Esca bends to hand it back to Cottia, and as their fingers brush he gives her a strange, wry smile; lips quirking a little at the edges. Marcus knows that smile, it's Esca's knowing smile, his badness smile, it's the smile he gives Marcus when they are tussling, in jest and then suddenly not, the smile Esca gives when he feels the hardness of Marcus' cock pressing against the jut of his hip.

"Interesting... _physiology_ they have," he says, and Cottia immediately smiles back at him, her mouth pulling into a little moue of amused shock, colour starting high on her freckled cheeks.

" _Really_?" she says, arching one eyebrow. Then when Esca just grins at her, she taps him on the back of his wrist with the flower and says, "Esca Mac Cunoval, what would your mother say, speaking to a lady on matters like that?"

"My mother would say the woods have as many secrets as a woman does." Cottia regards him askance

"Apparently secrets you have already discovered."

"Ah, no. I have but a... layman's knowledge. Of both woods and women."

Marcus regards them both blankly. He cannot see that Esca has said anything particularly improper, although he recognises the suddenly teasing tone of their banter, knows it to be something like flirting, feels the sharp double barb of his jealousy. It must be some strange Celtic thing, he thinks, yet another ritual of which he knows nothing.

"What on earth are you both talking about?" he asks.

"Oh," Cottia turns to him them, and dips her eyes at him, languid, tilting her head, coquettish. "The flowers," she holds them out for Marcus to see. "Esca was just pointing out that they look like... well..." she fades off, blushing again, and smiles up at Marcus, almost shy.

He takes the flowers from her, stem tender between his blunt fingers.

"Like what?" He'll admit they're a strange looking flower, with the lips and curls, the deep, darker wet velvet of the shadowed centre. But he cannot see that they look like anything other than what they are: flowers.

Cottia widens her eyes at him and inclines her head, gives him that _you know_ look. Esca is grinning at him broadly, on the verge of one of his rare rough chuckles.

"I don't see, like what? Oh!" It suddenly dawns on him, with an air of creeping embarrassment, what they are both talking about, and even then it is not thoughts of women that bring to mind what they mean, but of mares, of delivering a foal in the loamy dark of a latin night, the inner architecture suddenly revealed, that which is usually hidden. "Oh," he says again, and hands the flower abruptly back to Cottia as if it were a stinging nettle, feeling a flush start to rise along the column of his throat.

Esca does laugh then, pleased but with a hint of malice, a hint of the old Esca. "You're in for a treat on your wedding night, _llwynoges_ ," he says, using his nickname for Cottia. Marcus turns to Esca sharply, his embarrasment at his own blundering colouring into anger.

"I would not have you speak of our wedding night, Esca." And he uses his old voice too, his master's voice, leaving the other word unspoken: _slave_. Esca catches the unspoken savagery, smile abruptly fading from his eyes if not his mouth, and he ducks his head, "as you wish," tone as cold as wind off the night sea. For the rest of the ride, Cottia desperately tries to make ammends between them, speaking enough for the three of them, trying to fill the frost of their silence. But they ride quietly, jaws set, and soon enough they turn for home.

Esca is angry with him. He is angry with Esca. It has been a long time since things were that way between them. But still, Esca comes to find him in the stables that night, as they had arranged, and it gives an edge to what follows that has been absent in their tumblings for some months now. What has become sometimes gentle, slow and pulling; is now once again rough and quick, almost brutal, full of sharp edges, nails and teeth. They lie in the straw afterwards, cooling.

"I know some things," Marcus says, still almost angrily, looking up at the bats that swoop in and out of the rafters.

"I know," Esca replies in the darkness, voice still laboured by his hurried breaths.

"Even if I don't know about _orchids_ , I know some things," and he taps the backs of his knuckles lightly against the tender place where Esca's thigh meets his groin.

"I know," Esca says again, and this time his tone is distinctly sad. Marcus feels his own sadness come then too, rising from the place deep inside him where he hides it in the daylight, and he turns swiftly, burrowing his face into the sweat of Esca's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, unsure what he is apologising for; everything, nothing.

"I know," Esca says for the third time, reaching to trawl his fingers through the dampness of the hair at Marcus' nape.

Marcus wants to say then, although he doesn't: _this will be our bridal chamber, then. Here, among the sweet smelling hay_. But these are not things men say to each other.

Soon they will dress and head back to the villa, and soon enough it will be summer, and he will marry Cottia, her hair threaded with orchids.


End file.
